


Lost Horizon

by fancywaffles



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Felix Hugo Fraldarius and Sylvain Jose Gautier's Non-Blue Lions Paired Ending, Felix Hugo Fraldarius is Not Immune to Emotion, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Black Eagles Route, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-27
Updated: 2020-06-27
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:36:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24946243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fancywaffles/pseuds/fancywaffles
Summary: Sylvain held onto the hope of a new future after the war, until he realizes Felix isn't holding onto anything at all.(or, non-Azure Moon endings are ripe with angst & depression and so am I)
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 7
Kudos: 68
Collections: Sylvix Remix 2020





	Lost Horizon

**Author's Note:**

> Done for the SylvixRemix challenge based on this art [here](https://twitter.com/Keypy0n/status/1242465433539588096?s=20) by Keypy0n on twitter. Remix by way of my depression.

It didn’t start right. That was what Sylvain thought to himself later, when he was trying to put together the pieces of everything they’d done wrong. Everything he’d done wrong.

“Hey,” Sylvain said, his voice breaking the tight silence of the quiet room. “Let me help with that.”

Felix’s fingers were still half tangled in his own hair, tying it back up in the same way that Sylvain had seen him do the entire war. “You don’t have to,” he said.

“I want to,” Sylvain said and took Felix’s silence as an assent. He walked closer, taking in the long lines of Felix’s neck and the way his dark hair fell against it when Felix let it go and his hands dropped to his sides. Sylvain took his time. He was supposed to have time. They were _supposed_ to have time.

Sylvain had a moment after securing the tie in Felix’s hair to lean in, kiss the back of his neck, and ask him to stay.

He didn’t.

“Thanks,” Felix said. He brushed his fingers against the back of his neck like he knew what Sylvain was too cowardly to do. He turned back towards Sylvain and the worst part of it was that it was the first time in a long time that Sylvain had seen any sort of light in his eyes. He’d taken too long to notice it was missing.

“Do…” Sylvain started the sentence but it trailed off in the shadows of Felix’s tired stare. He licked his lips. “You should avoid the Red Moon trail. Edelgard said there was a dam break, that entire path is pushed back towards Rowe now.”

Felix nodded and the ghost of a smirk lifted his lips.

“What?” Sylvain asked. He didn’t know what could make Felix almost smile anymore. Even if it was too late he wanted to know.

Felix shook his head. “Nothing. I… I’ll take a different route.” He rubbed the back of his neck again and then walked back towards where he’d set his swords the night before and started strapping them on. The noise of him buckling them back into the overly complicated sword belt Sylvain had taken too long to figure out how to efficiently take off was the only noise in the room.

There was light starting to come in through the window. Felix had woken before sunrise. Now sunrise was here.

Felix pulled his gloves on and for a second Sylvain thought maybe he’d walk straight out the door, but he only faced it. “The Saints Road should still work.”

“Right,” Sylvain said. “Nice views that way.”

“Yeah,” Felix said, and then he left.

Sylvain didn’t follow. It didn’t occur to him that maybe Felix’s words were an invitation.

He knew better.

* * *

_They started wrong._

Sylvain found Felix in the medical tent, which was enough to worry him, but the injury that had lead him there was a lance head pierced through his shoulder. Felix didn’t even notice Sylvain approach as he stared unfocused at the tent wall, while the healer worked on removing the lance.

“Felix?” Sylvain asked. “Are you—”

“It didn’t go deep enough to do any severe damage to the muscle,” the healer said, mostly to Sylvain and then directed the next bit to Felix. “You shouldn’t lose any movement in your sword arm.”

Felix nodded, but didn’t even seem to notice as the healer bandaged up his shoulder. The healer stopped halfway through, called across the other room by a new more dire injury and Sylvain took over easily. Even if he hadn’t actually paid attention to their medical training, he’d gotten enough practical experience by now. It didn’t seem like too bad of a wound compared to some of the ones they’d gotten, but Felix still wasn’t doing much more than blinking.

“Felix?” Sylvain asked again. When he didn’t get a response he finished tying off the bandage and then dropped his gaze to the bloodied lance fragment sitting on a metal tray instead of attached to the weapon it should have been. Sylvain almost didn’t register it. He didn’t want to register it. “That’s… is that Ingrid’s?”

He’d seen her out there. She was hard to miss, flying high above the stream of Kingdom forces guarding Arianrhod and looking like the knight she’d always wanted to be.

“ _Ingrid_?” Sylvain asked again. It wasn’t the right question, but Felix answered anyway by turning his head away.

Sylvain was usually good at keeping it together, but the image of the fight between them rolling in his mind and the inevitability of what had happened based on the broken lance and the fact that Felix was expressionless made it all too clear that she was gone. He choked out a sob, doing a terrible job trying to cover it. “Fuck,” Sylvain said and almost lost his balance completely, settling for sinking to his knees on the floor.

“I can’t believe…” Sylvain tried to compose himself. He was better than this, it was inevitable that they’d have to face their friends, but… Sylvain looked up at Felix’s drawn face. “I’m sorry.”

Felix’s eyebrows drew down and the scoff he made was razor sharp. “Why are _you_ sorry?”

“You shouldn’t have had to do it,” Sylvain said. The fantasy of talking Ingrid to their side, letting her understand how much freer she’d be in a Crest-free world, able to carve her own path, disappeared and left a chasm in its wake. “It should’ve been me.”

She never would have listened to him, but at least he knew that and would’ve known that.

Felix’s eyes were glassy now and the anguish was all too clear. Sylvain drew himself up to standing and dragged Felix forward, forgetting all about his injured shoulder when he hugged him. Other than a wince and a slightly weaker grip in one arm, Felix didn’t object and held on.

***

_There were too many mistakes._

“Felix?” Sylvain asked, his voice laced with sleep. Felix wasn’t asleep. He was sitting up in their shared sleeping mat. His knees were up, his elbows resting on them, and his hands were dragging through his hair. Sylvain could see the notches in his spine at that angle and wondered, tiredly, if he was eating enough.

“Go back to sleep,” Felix said. His voice was brittle.

The Tailtean Plains were behind them, but not that far behind. Still only a horse ride away. Sylvain pushed himself up to sitting and hesitated before putting a hand on Felix’s back. He tried to avoid the particularly nasty scar that hadn’t healed up yet as his palm pressed down on Felix’s bare skin.

“There was nothing you could do,” Sylvain said. “You saw him. He wasn’t listening.”

Felix nodded, but didn’t lift his head from his own hands.

“There was nothing you could do,” Sylvain said again. It was a kind of sick satisfaction that the worst of it was over. There was no one else that he’d ever had fantasies of saving left. “Felix,” Sylvain said, softly. “It’s going to be okay. There’s a horizon. We’re almost there.”

Felix lifted his head and turned around, pushing Sylvain back onto the mat and crawling over him. His lips were rough on Sylvain’s like he wanted to swallow the lie. Sylvain did his best to make it seem real. It was _going_ to be real.

***

_He missed too many signs._

Winning was a bittersweet affair. Victory would’ve tasted sweeter if the aftermath of it hadn’t been spent trying to save what was left of Fhirdiad that wasn’t burnt down. Sylvain tried to think of a phoenix, a majestic creature rising from all of this. Maybe the new city would have one of those self-governance councils Edelgard wanted to set up. Maybe there’d be new kids playing in groves throwing crab-apples at each other. Kids with a real future of all their own making and not dictated by their bloodline.

Sylvain took those thoughts and held onto them until the actual victory celebration. They’d done it at Garreg Mach, which was the biggest irony of all — the Monastery as a party hub.

“You clean up nicely,” Sylvain said, throwing an arm around Felix.

“Thanks,” Felix said and then awkwardly added, “You too.”

Sylvain laughed, it felt good. “Careful, you compliment me too much and I’ll be insufferable.”

A tired smile lifted on Felix’s lips. “Too late.”

Sylvain was about to ask if Felix had a chance to drink anything, when he noticed Felix staring across the room at Edelgard. He didn’t look angry. He didn’t look happy. He didn’t look anything. “She offered me Fraldarius,” he said.

Sylvain had yet to be offered Gautier, unsure if he wanted it or not, except he could do _so_ much now. He could heal old wounds in Sreng. He could slowly dismantle everything his father had built and be a key piece in creating a better world. He had a real future, they all had one now. “Should I refer to you as ‘Your Grace’ now?”

Felix shook his head. “I turned it down. Someone else can…someone else should deal with it. I gave her some names.”

Sylvain hadn’t known that Felix had kept up well enough in the last five years to know what names to pick. Sylvain couldn’t think of any for Gautier.

“I have a spare bed if you’re homeless now,” Sylvain said, grinning lasciviously.

Felix flicked his eyes towards Sylvain and snorted, leaning back into Sylvain’s arm. “That doesn’t sound too bad.”

Sylvain let himself think, really think, about Felix in Gautier, about Felix with him, helping with rebuilding, underneath him, by his side forever. The bright warmth he was expecting for a victory glow finally arrived.

Felix looked up at him confused and Sylvain said, “We need to get you a thicker winter coat.”

***

 _He’d_ ignored _the signs._

“I can’t wait until these post-war skirmishes die down,” Sylvain said with a groan. He wanted to get to the part of their story where he could settle down and be lazy.

“You think they will?” Felix asked. He looked weirdly relaxed given the circumstances. Sylvain still saw him training as obsessively as he had in the Academy and during the war, but the kind of serene features that smoothed out all the tension on Felix’s face, only seemed to happen when they were fighting something real.

“I hope so?” Sylvain said, not meaning to make it sound like a question. “You don’t?”

Felix shrugged. “There’s always something to fight.”

It was such a weird statement to cause the kind of relaxed posture Felix sank into when he said it.

Whatever worked. Sylvain smiled at him. “Come on, let’s head back. We can probably make it back to Gautier before dark if we leave now.”

Felix’s shoulders stiffened a little as he sheathed his swords. Sylvain wondered if he’d flared up his injury again, but couldn’t bring himself to ask.

***

_Sylvain thought he’d lost him. He’d never had him in the first place._

“You’re leaving,” Sylvain said, as if Felix had a bag packed already.

Felix looked away from him. Confirmation enough.

“ _Why_?” Sylvain asked.

When Felix met his eyes, Sylvain couldn’t believe how tired he looked. “I… I can’t stay here. Everything reminds me of…” He shook his head and paced away far enough so that his expression was hidden again. “There are still places to fight. I’m good at that.”

“It’s not all you’re good for!” Sylvain said, moving in front of him. Making Felix look at him.

Felix’s lack of reaction meant he didn’t think the same. “You’re built for this. You’re good at this. I…”

“You could at least fucking _try_ ,” Sylvain snapped and regretted it almost immediately.

“I have been,” Felix said, quietly.

“Bullshit,” Sylvain said, too scared to be anything but angry. “You’re running away from the future we fought for, because it’s scarier than being the guy with a sword.”

Felix didn’t even look angry. He looked tired, so tired, when was the last time he’d slept through the night. Sylvain suddenly couldn’t remember.

“I don’t belong in that future.”

 _You belong in mine._ That was what Sylvain should have said. That was what Sylvain _wanted_ to say. Instead, he said, “Coward.”

Felix’s expression was blank. “Last time I left, you said it was brave.”

Sylvain felt the hit deep beneath his ribcage. What was the alternative? Die for for a broken system and a broken king? He hadn’t _forced_ Felix to come. “It’s not my fault,” Sylvain said, the panic around his words making it clear he wasn’t sure if he believed that.

“It’s not,” Felix agreed.

The silence that followed needed to be filled, but neither of them seemed to be able to do it.

Sylvain didn’t know what Felix wanted him to say. Hadn’t he done enough to fix it? Wasn’t the war supposed to _fix_ this?

“It’s like you wish you’d stayed and died,” Sylvain said, finally.

Felix looked down at the floor.

“Dying for a cause is just dying, remember?” Sylvain said, picking the wound raw. “All this work we put in to have a life and a real future and you want to throw it away because you didn’t get to be Glenn and die for Dimitri?”

He got a reaction. That was what Sylvain wanted. He was sure that was what he wanted, up until the moment when he got it. Felix lifted his head and his eyes were molten fire. “Thanks for making this easy.”

***

_They started wrong. Sylvain didn't want to end wrong too._

Felix did have a bag packed by the time Sylvain found him again. He’d been able to pack his entire life (their entire life) into such a small bag. Sylvain pictured him wandering from town to town, dirty clothes, and no life but the sword and it ached.

“I shouldn’t have said that,” Sylvain said.

Felix didn’t meet his eyes but shrugged his good shoulder. “We know each other too well.”

If they’d been different people. If Sylvain had been someone else, could Felix have carved a new future? Was it only the war and his regrets or was it Sylvain always reminding him of it?

If Sylvain begged, would Felix stay? Maybe. It wasn’t enough. Staying wasn’t enough. Felix wouldn’t really be here. He’d be the empty shell that Sylvain had been too selfish to see. Maybe if he’d seen it earlier this could’ve been different.

“Sylvain…” Felix started, his eyes were downcast and he ran a tongue over his lip. He was building up to it. The goodbye.

“Can we… can we pretend for one more night?” Sylvain asked, not letting him say it.

Felix lifted his head, his eyes were clear and he didn’t say anything, only nodded.

Sylvain didn’t rush him. He didn’t make a big romantic gesture. He didn’t want that. He wanted to pretend they had all the time in the world. He wanted to memorize the way Felix’s breath hitched when Sylvain tightened his grip in his hair. He wanted to stay in the moment of soft noises and tangled limbs. He wanted to know all the different ways Felix knew and had learned how to kiss him. He wanted to remember what the weight of Felix felt like over him, under him, by him. Sylvain wanted to live the future they weren’t getting.

Sylvain wanted…

It was quiet in the dark room. The moon barely casting light into the small space they’d carved for themselves in Gautier… the space Sylvain had carved for them. The space that right at this moment still included Felix.

Felix’s hair was down and his smile was tired, but sincere. Sylvain went to grasp his hand, hold onto him, but he knew he wouldn’t ever let go if he did, so instead he unfurled Felix’s hand and pressed his palm against Felix’s.

  
Felix pressed back. Their eyes met and Felix’s gaze was soft and it was clear he was trying to hold onto this moment too. They only needed to curl their hands, grip at each other. Neither of them did.

Sylvain thought maybe he was seeing Felix for the first time, real and complete, and wished the moment could extend into forever and the sun would never rise.

* * *

Sylvain watched from the balustrade of House Gautier as the form of Felix riding horseback slowly got smaller and smaller until it disappeared completely. He kept staring, hoping he’d see it turn and get larger again. It was like every other hope he’d clung to during the war. It was only a mirage of his own making to get him through the next moment and the one after that.

“Margrave?” one of Sylvain’s attendants called for him. “You said to tell you if there was any response from Sreng?”

Sylvain took one more moment to look into the distance. Felix was still gone, but in the distance a raven was flying through the horizon, circling the forest, and diving down into the trees.

Sylvain turned and nodded. “I’ll be right there.”

He was burnt like Fhirdiad, but maybe… maybe something good could rise from the ashes.

**Author's Note:**

> There's like a 50/50 chance I abandon artistic integrity and canon and write a follow-up chapter, but we'll see. I'm @waffle_fancy on twitter if you would like to yell at me, but really it's Intsys's fault.


End file.
